Reviews: Doctor Who: Aliens of London, The Satan Pit, The Time of Angels, Stormcage

The Target range of Doctor Who novelisations expands again with three new adventures committed to the page.

First up is Joseph Lidster with an adaptation of Russell T Davies' two-part adventure 'Aliens of London'/'World War Three'.  This is a freewheeling version of the story, and, like the show itself at the time of transmission, is fun and breezy with lots to enjoy. It follows the plot of the story closely, but there are a few additions. One that puzzled me slightly is the kidnapping of a boy called Brian early on. It seems that the boy is then used, along with a pig, to create the pig-hybrid thing which was piloting the spacecraft that crashed into Big Ben, but the fact that the boy was used (which is actually quite horrific) is not mentioned again.

The family Slitheen are well described, and there's a lot of great characterisation throughout. Another interesting element is that Doctor Sato at the hospital is reconfirmed as being the same person as Toshiko Sato from Torchwood. This was established in Torchwood itself: she has a conversation with Owen about how she had to pretend to be a doctor when he was hung over to cover for him and ended up meeting a space pig. Russell T Davies also confirmed at the time that they were the same person. There's also some appearances from Jack Harkness in the book, watching the Doctor and having timey-wimey shenanigans. 

I enjoyed the read and the ride and it's a great adaptation of a fast moving story.

Moving on to Matt Jones' adaptation of his own scripts for the two part story 'The Impossible Planet'/'The Satan Pit' and this is another very well written piece of prose. Jones sets the scenes as the three survivors (Ida/Zack/Danny) of the events on the planet Krop Tor are being put on trial for the deaths of their friends, and for the financial loss of the Sanctuary Base they were using. Each tells their own parts of the story, and so we get a version of the adventure which is slightly different from what was seen on television in that elements are explained, if you like, in the wrong order. It's a clever way of telling the story and I liked it a lot.

We have a couple of interjections from the people hearing their tales, and we conclude in the court room, during which there is a section as told by the Doctor himself which is most interesting. One of the defining characteristics of most prose Doctor Who is that the Doctor himself is unknowable, and we don't hear his thoughts or know what he's up to. This element in the book completely ignores that of course and we find out exactly what he's thinking and doing when he confronts the giant demonic god/monster/creature at the bottom of the pit.

There's also a coda where the Doctor, as part of his 'world tour' just before he regenerates in 'The End of Time', visits Ida and has a chat with her in a cemetery. It's a nice sequence and seems in line with how the Doctor was behaving at that time. There's also some expansion of the Ood here, with their 'song' coming into the narrative, and also their celebration/song of the Doctor which started in 2146 in 'Planet of the Ood'. This actually forms a key part of the narrative here and is well explained and worked into the overall plot.

There was a lot of speculation at the time as to the amount of change that Jones' ideas and scripts underwent, with the addition of the Ood (which were created by Russell T Davies for the story) being a major element. Davies has explained that an early draft of the script included Raxacoricofallapatorians - beings from the same planet as the Slitheen family - rather than the Ood. The idea was that the aliens had been enslaved and they wanted to awaken the Beast as they thought it could free them. This novelisation, however, follows the televised story and includes the Ood.

Overall this is a great addition to the Target range, and the book makes the most of an excellent script and a very exciting and eventful story. I think it's my favourite of the three this time around.

The third novelisation in this batch is by Jenny T Colgan and is of the Steven Moffat story 'The Time of Angels'/'Flesh and Stone'.

Something that all three of these books have in common is that they try to replicate their eras. So the Eccleston is fast and furious and fun; the Tennant is more heavy on the weight of being the Doctor; and the Smith one is fast and loose with an emphasis more on the events and the spectacle rather than on the story.

Thus Colgan manages to add a little into the proceedings, but not much in the way of explanation as to what is going on. The plot seems to change depending on where you are in it. There's River Song dashing around and dropping 'Spoilers' and 'Sweetie' everywhere, the Doctor muddling on through and Amy Pond overshadowed by both of them. In the mix too are a bunch of soldier Clerics, and, initially one, but then hundreds of weeping Angel creatures which are in this crashed ship and whose motivation seems somewhat obtuse. I'm just not sure what they wanted. Power? The ability to time travel? 

The story of course follows the televised episodes, but the telling is far more linear than the other books. There's an introductory piece about a man repeatedly sent further and further back in time by the Angels, and I think he wrote the book that Father Octavian is looking at. There's also a little foreshadowing of the clever sequence in the forest where Amy is talking to the Doctor (but it's the Doctor from a future adventure, 'The Big Bang', rather than the one from this story - I loved that touch on transmission).

I think if you enjoyed the television episodes, then you'll probably get on fine with the book, but don't expect any great revelations or additional information here. 

The three books have excellent covers from Dan Liles, and are £10.99 each in paperback. They have also changed the internal paper stock and it's now very much thinner than before.

The final book for review is another featuring River Song. And it's a hardback 'game' book of all things. The ones where you read a page or so, and then it poses the reader a question: If River goes back to her cell, turn to entry 102; if she heads to the engine room, turn to entry 45 ... that sort of thing.

Allegedly written by Alex Kingston (the busy actress who played River Song), but probably written by BBC Books regulars Jacqueline Rayner and Steve Cole, the book follows you/River in an adventure which starts in the Stormcage containment facility. As you go, you choose your path, and there are many endings. 

I managed to die within about 5 minutes of reading! But the book helpfully has little tick boxes so you can mark your choices as you go. This means you can backtrack (or start again) and choose different selections to see how you get on. There are Daleks and Cybermen lurking inside, as well as the TARDIS, the Doctor and a regeneration, plus Varga plants, taranium and the Time Destructor ... and lots more depending on the choices you make!

It's an enjoyable escapade, and dipping through the entries at random reveals all manner of twists and turns and characters ... I don't envy the putting of it all together, or the editors having to read and check every entry to follow all the variant story threads that it has. 

River Song last appeared on television 11 years ago (2015), so this publication is a little like a book featuring the Meddling Monk coming out while 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang' was being transmitted. Isn't fandom and the existence of DVD and episode streaming wonderful!

New Doctor Who: The Daleks' Master Plan ...

I say 'new' Doctor Who, but of course we're talking about some new 'old' Doctor Who.

This crazy show has something of a history around its past, which is ironic for a programme which is all about time travel. Just in case you're not up to speed ... while there have been 65 years or so of Doctor Who episodes transmitted by the BBC, not all of them still exist to enjoy today. This is largely as a result of the cost of videotape back in the sixties and early seventies, and the BBC's need to reuse it where they could, but also because the BBC saw themselves very much as a television producer and transmitter, and not as an archive. So they got rid of a large number of programmes by wiping the tapes for reuse, or throwing filmed copies away to make space for other things ... never stopping to think that someone in the future might be interested in seeing them again.

And thus it was that just 97 episodes of Doctor Who remained missing from the BBC's archives, consigned to the dustbin of history. The irony is that while they threw away the completed programmes, they kept all the production paperwork and photographs that had been taken. And enterprising fans had kept audio recordings of the episodes that they made at the time of transmission ... so we could listen to the episodes and look at the photographs, appreciating the details of which BBC studios they were made in and how much the costumes cost ... but we couldn't watch them.

After a long period in which there were no Doctor Who recoveries - missing episodes rediscovered in collections or at overseas television stations - hope was fading that anything more would be found. But then ...

In 2025, an organisation called Film is Fabulous managed to get access to the film collection of an elderly collector. It seems he didn't even know what he had ... but what he had included two episodes of sixties Doctor Who which were missing from the BBC's archives!

They were recovered, repaired and cleaned up, returned to the BBC, and on Good Friday, 3 April 2026, they went live on the BBC iPlayer for everyone to enjoy once more!

And what a treat. The two episodes both came from a 12 part story called 'The Daleks' Master Plan', a 1965/66 epic which saw the Doctor (William Hartnell), along with companion Steven (Peter Purves), and a handmaiden from ancient Troy called Katarina (Adrienne Hill), team up with  Bret Vyon (Nicholas Courtney in his first ever appearance in Doctor Who) and his sister, Space Special Security Service operative Sara Kingdom (Jean Marsh) to try and foil an invasion of the Solar System by the Daleks, aided by the Guardian of the Solar System himself Mavic Chen (Kevin Stoney). The story encompassed many worlds, escapes, chases, intrigue and excitement as the Daleks try to obtain the emm of the mineral taranium that they need to power the awesome Time Destructor weapon. 

Bret Vyon (Nicholas Courtney), the Doctor
(William Hartnell), Katarina (Adrienne Hill)
and Steven (Peter Purves) consider the
taranium core.

Some of the story existed (episodes 2, 5 and 10) but most was missing, and this episode recovery comprised episodes 1 and 3 of the adventure. So we could finally see how it all started, and, indeed, enjoy the first three episodes uninterrupted.

This was a fascinating time for Doctor Who. Under John Wiles' producership, the show was abandoning some of it's previous companion characters and tropes and trying to move into a more groundbreaking approach to the stories and adventures. Indeed, the whole of 'The Daleks' Master Plan' was foreshadowed with a one episode adventure called 'Mission to the Unknown' which didn't feature the regular cast at all. This laid the groundwork for the Daleks' presence on the planet Kembel, and the alliance of aliens from the outer Galaxies who were coming together with the Daleks to attack the Earth. After this episode, there was then a four part story called 'The Myth Makers' which had the Doctor, Vicki and Steven adventuring in ancient Troy, and then, at the end of this, Vicki leaves, Katarina enters the TARDIS, Steven is injured, and they're off to the start of 'The Daleks' Master Plan'.

I enjoyed the first episode a lot. 'The Nightmare Begins' sets the scene with Mavic Chen heading off on a holiday (in reality to conspire with the Daleks) while the Doctor and friends arrive on Kembel so the Doctor can try and find something to help Steven. Bret Vyon is also there and he stumbles across the TARDIS and thus the scene is set ...

The direction from Douglas Camfield is as good as we have come to expect from him. Great visuals, tracking shots and interest in every scene. The performances are also good, and we come away somewhat in awe.

I found it interesting that in episode 2 the characters talk about something that we don't see! In episode 1, Bret Vyon is trapped in a magnetic chair in the TARDIS while the Doctor heads outside to see what he can find, leaving Katarina caring for Steven. Vyon persuades Katarina to give Steven some pills he has in his belt pouch which will help cure him. Then in episode 2, Katarina and Steven are suddenly outside the TARDIS, Steven has a jacket and shirt on (he was topless in episode 1), and Bret Vyon has escaped. It seems that he persuaded Katarina to release him from the chair and they all left the TARDIS as they thought it might be dangerous to stay there as the Daleks were outside ... in fact it was the safest place to be.  But we never see any of this happen. They just talk about it!

The second recovered episode is part 3, 'Devil's Planet', and this for me is the more enjoyable of the two. We're now in Mavic Chen's stolen Spar spaceship heading for the prison planet Desperus, and the Daleks take control of the ship remotely and bring it down on the planet. What makes all this so interesting is that there are very few photographs of the events on Desperus available, so we see sets and characters we have never seen before (except for on the original transmission). This is just sublime for a died-in-the-wool fan, and I loved the beardy men (and women) and their initial struggle over a knife. This reminded me of the show's first story, '100,000 BC' and the struggle to control fire: who controlled fire, controlled the tribe. And here we have the same thing with the knife being the symbol of power.

The giant feet of a 'screamer' bat
threatens Kirksen

There's also some giant 'screamer' bats on the planet to contend with, and to my surprise we don't actually see them, just a shadow. Which is very intriguing as there is a photo of one of the criminals, Kirksen (Douglas Sheldon), being attacked by a giant pair of legs and feet ... so they built it but never used it on screen (except to throw said shadow perhaps). Fascinating. Maybe Camfield felt it didn't work as a visual so decided to just go with suggestion.

The episode ends with a cliff hanger that the Daleks arrive on Desperus, but the Doctor and friends escape, taking off again in the Spar, but with an unwelcome passenger: one of the criminals, Kirksen; who grabs Katarina and holds her prisoner in the airlock of the ship. Exciting stuff!

While we had 3 episodes already, with a story like this which features a variety of characters and locations for which there is little or no visual record, this is a real treat. It makes me wish so hard that more of the story did exist and that we could enjoy it all again. But sadly this is not the case. 

As with much of sixties Doctor Who, there are episodes missing which we would love to revisit but cannot, relying on the memories of those who saw them on transmission to confirm that they were indeed some of the very best that Doctor Who had to offer at the time. When we get a discovery like this, it just cements that stories like 'The Daleks' Master Plan' was indeed a 'masterful' set of episodes, and truly deserves its reputation as one of the great lost classics of television of the time. 

For the moment, point your browser or television to the BBC iPlayer (in the UK) or to the BBC's YouTube channel (in the USA) to enjoy again the start of the greatest adventure that the Doctor has ever undertaken.

POSTSCRIPT

For my first viewing I wanted to get into the mood, so there are a couple of other things to seek out to watch in order to get an effective build up to the newly recovered episodes.  

I suggest:

'Mission to the Unknown' - the episode no longer exists, but the University of Lancashire remade it in 2019 using the same cameras and style as were originally used in the sixties. Moreover an enterprising fan matched the remade episode to the original soundtrack, and the result is probably as close as you can get to watching the original. The soundtrack matched version can be found here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7nz2pu

After this, there is a rather lovely interlude/teaser which uses AI to recreate key visuals from 'The Myth Makers' and thus provide the introduction of Katarina and the injuring of Steven so that you go into 'The Daleks' Master Plan' reminded of the immediately preceding story. This is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmZ3yquMEqA

Then we have episodes 1-3 of 'The Daleks' Master Plan' to watch on iPlayer, but you then need to skip episode 4 and head to episode 5 ... or you can watch a photo reconstruction of episode 4 on Dailymotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7gw2s9

However you decide to watch these returned episodes, I hope they bring you as much joy and happiness as they have to me ... a little slice of classic Who has come home to rest. And may there be many more.

*****************************

While I'm here ... If you're a fan of film, then have a look at a Film Festival that I run with my wife, Sam.  THE SYKEHOUSE FILM AND WRITERS' FESTIVAL combines writing with filmmaking, and we have an amazing weekend coming up on the 16/17 May showing some of the films entered in this year's festival, plus guests and panels and talks and pitching sessions with agents and film producers ... all sorts of great things.  Here's a rundown of what to expect:

For more information and tickets, please visit www.slhfilmfest.com

Review: Doctor Who: The Adventures After

This is another in the current BBC Children's books series of anthologies and follows on from The Adventures Before.  This time we're looking at mini-adventures that happened after certain Doctor Who stories, and it's a mixed bag. Some of the stories are not really sequels and yet the contents pages and subtitle to the book suggest they are.

There are two stories written (or co-written) by stars from the show: Carole Ann Ford (with Rob Craine and Beth Axford) who played Susan in the show has 'The Verge of Death' which follows 'Marco Polo' and picks up on the prior events of 'Inside the Spaceship' where the TARDIS was trying to warn the travellers of danger. The idea is that a psychic creature has got into the ship and is attacking them ... 

And Katy Manning who played Jo has a story which follows 'The Green Death' about the Master attempting to get hold of the Metebelis crystal given to Jo by the Doctor.

Other stories are 'The Face of Fear' by David N Smith which is aligned to 'The Web of Fear' but which is more of a sequel to 'The Faceless Ones' as the Chameleons are back. Paul Magrs provides a proper sequel to 'The Daemons' as the Master (or Missy) is back and the 13th Doctor has to work with an aged Olive Hawthorne to stop Missy from summoning Azal again. Mark Griffiths brings us 'Harry Sullivan and the Chalice of Vengeance' which follows 'The Christmas Invasion' (one of the Sycorax survives and saves his mind which then encounters the 4th Doctor, Sarah and Harry in the future.)  ... Janelle McCurdy has 'The Ashes of Pompeii', a sequel to 'The Fires of Pompeii' (the Doctor and Donna have a second encounter with a Pyrovile)... Alfie Shaw has 'Aftercare', which follows the events of  'The Angels Take Manhattan' (a sad tale of Brian Williams trying to come to terms with Rory's death) ... and finally Beth Axford has 'Save the Earth', aligned to 'Kill the Moon', with clothes that eat people and the Doctor's coat having dimensionally transcendental pockets.

As I've said before about these books, they are aimed at 8-12 year old kids, and as time moves forward, so those kids fast outgrow whatever is being written for them. So an 8 year old in 2025 would have not been born when 'Kill the Moon' was shown, and would have been 6 when 'The Giggle' was transmitted (Ncuti Gatwa's debut) ... and only 1 year old when 'The Woman Who Fell to Earth' was transmitted (Jodie Whittaker's debut) ... my point is that it's hard to see how these kids, who have grown up in a world where Doctor Who is less 'event' and more 'cult' would react to the stories and want to buy them (or have them bought for them).

I feel that around the age of 6 or 7 is when we start to get our 'core memories' (as Inside Out might put it) and kids watching the show for the first time at around that age are more likely to then want to go and find out more ... especially if the watching is a shared experience with friends at school. But for something to be able to tap into that 'shared experience' it needs to be 'shared' ... Look at how well the whole Stranger Things phenomenon has grown ... off the back of Netflix planning and coordinating 'drops' of the episodes so everyone can watch at roughly the same time, and then discuss and want to see what happens next with their friends. Doctor Who just doesn't have the same degree of mass-market take-up these days, and when there is an opportunity to be taken, it tends not to be. 

I really hope that this book and others like it find a market, but I'm really not sure what that market is.

Review: Spirited

We discovered Spirited hiding on Prime. It's an Australian genre series from 2010/11 and is a little 'inspired' (if that's a thing) by shows like Ghosts or The Ghost and Mrs Muir and so on.

The basic idea is that a dentist, Suzy Darling (Claudia Karvan), finds that she can see the ghost of a 1980s punk rock star called Henry Mallett (Matt King). The series is all about Henry trying to figure out how he died and why he's haunting the apartment block in which Suzy has her work and living place. Just giving a basic synopsis like this does somewhat demean the whole as it's a well written and very engaging series, with some black comedy mixed in, and some great characters who grow and change as the series progresses. There's Steve, Suzy's ex, who starts out being a right bar steward, sleeping with basically anyone who will have him - and a surprising number of women seem to want him!  But by the end he has his own moment of revelation and seems to change his ways.

Henry is a smashing character and Matt King plays him with aplomb ... all eighties punk sensibility and rage packed into a tall lanky man who can't work out where it all went wrong. Claudia Karvan is a superb foil for him and, as the only human who can see and hear him, starts to grow fond of her spectral friend.

There's lots of good ideas on show, some great performances, and a very well realised romance blossoming between the two leads - even though they can't actually touch each other.

Recommended viewing.

Review: The Art of Time Travel by Peter Mckinstry

This is more like it!  After a seemingly endless succession of 'in universe' factual photo books from BBC Books about Doctor Who, finally we get a proper behind the scenes look at the work of art department designer Peter Mckinstry.

Peter worked on Seasons 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the revived Doctor Who series as a concept artist and designer, and his work spans pretty much everything that you see on screen. There are a great many superb illustrations here depicting everything from Sonic Screwdrivers to watches through guns and gadgets, to giant spacecraft and aliens. There's (of course) redesigned Daleks and Cybermen and Sontarans and all manner of other things which Peter was commissioned to create for various other books and magazines, and accompanying them all is a commentary explaining the key points and thought processes that went into realising the ideas.

Alongside these there are Peter's emails and comments to Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat and their responses which give a great insight into how the ideas develop into reality for the screen.

I loved the book. It's big and chunky and full of colour, information and interest. The true behind the scenes elements have always been of more interest to me than 'in universe' continuity-type information and so this book is ideal! It's a fascinating insight into how a 'world' or 'alien' can be developed in Doctor Who and how every element is considered and thought through to give consistency to their race and culture, whether that be the jewellery they wear, the weaponry they carry, or even how they decorate their spacecraft or buildings.

The copy I was sent was a second printing, so maybe this has done really well to have been reprinted so fast ... or maybe they underestimated the print run it would need!  Either way it bodes well for more like this in the future.

Review: First Light - The Science Fiction Art of Alex Storer

I'm a sucker for art books, I love the collected works of people far more talented than I am at painting and drawing and illustration ... and so this new collection from Alex Storer is right up my street.

First Light collects together  many of Storer's pieces of fantastic art and is presented thematically: Cities, Stars, Worlds, Environments and finishing with a selection of book covers that he has created.

'Cities' presents some marvellously gothic creations. 'Daybreak' is a smashing vista of a man looking out at a purple and violet hued cityscape at sunrise, across a river, while a cat watches the man ... marvellously forlorn and evocative, the image has a hint of peace about it ...

'Thalassa' meanwhile is a drowned cityscape. The tops of skyscrapers poke through the waters, while taller structures are visible through the watery air. Another very evocative piece.

The images range from the neon drenched 'Night Shift' to lovers running across a green meadow ... Cities of all types are represented.

'Stars' presents spacescapes and rocket ships and spacestations ... all hanging in the inky star studded void. These are fascinating and serene.

'Worlds' goes to the planets and we have twin moons, space suited explorers, underwater creatures and incredible vistas.

'Environments' is similar, but focussing on specific conditions: ice and snow, caverns and tunnels dominate.

And finally the book covers for authors like Alice Sabo, Terry Grimwood and Andrew Hook. All great evocative cover imagery which makes you want to pick the books concerned up: the prime function of a cover!

All in all this 80 page book is a tremendous celebration of the imagination of Alex Storer and of a love of art and colour and shade and of incredible sights hitherto unseen. It's well worth a look!

Copies are available from Amazon at: https://amzn.eu/d/8GIDLHD

Review: The Moon Cruise by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson

The Moon Cruise is the latest Doctor Who novel from Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson, and is her first original novel for the BBC's range. Previously she wrote the novelisation of 'The Church on Ruby Road'.

In line with the other recent novels, The Moon Cruise is a short book clocking in at 189 pages. The story sees the 15th Doctor and Belinda part way through his second season (the novel places the action after the story 'The Well' when the Doctor is still taking vindicator readings from various places in his attempt to get Belinda back to Earth).

Here they arrive on what the Doctor thinks is a deserted asteroid, but which is reality one of the service corridors for a fantastic space cruise experience named The Moon Cruise. The ship is owned and run by Marilyn Moon, a character inexplicably modelled on singer and actress Marilyn Monroe, and as the Doctor and Belinda soon discover, the ship and its crew and its modus operandi are not at all what they seem.

The workers are prisoners, serving out a sentence which rises with every minor infraction, and Belinda ends up taking the place of one of them. The Doctor has to rescue her and so joins forces with the worker she replaced, a green-haired girl named Jax, to infiltrate the upper levels of the ship and to find out the truth behind the whole setup. But there are robotic guards everywhere, and giant centipedes roaming the lower levels ...

The novel has quite a few welcome influences from Doctor Who. We have, of course, the other space cruise liner story, 'Voyage of the Damned' with its robotic angelic Hosts and an owner, Max Capricorn, who isn't exactly human himself. Then there's elements from 'The Greatest Show in the Galaxy' with the robot clowns, and also 'The Long Game' where the humans down below are controlled by a mysterious entity on the upper floors, reached by a single lift. It feels like a Doctor Who story, which is great.

Jikiemi-Pearson blends all these ideas together well, and her writing flows nicely, bringing the reader quickly through the story. The idea that the robotic guards have human parts inside also brings to mind 'Frontios' where the Tractators used human body parts to power their mining machines, or, indeed 'The Girl in the Fireplace' where the Regency Clockwork Men used human parts to fix up the spaceship they were travelling in. One thing I wasn't quite sure about was why there were giant centipedes and ember-emitting fungus in the lower floors - there's some words about how they just grew and multiplied there, but this is just Belinda's assumption - but it all adds to the suspense and provides for some great action sequences.

Overall the story doesn't really feel like a 15th Doctor adventure though, and in some respects I could 'see' the same story being told in the same way with any of the incarnations of the Doctor being involved. It's an enjoyable and action packed book, and once it gets going, it just keeps on going ... 

It's a diverting and enjoyable read and I had a lot of fun with it. A good way to pass an afternoon.